Blood Heat (The New Doctor Who Adventures) [Paperback]

To say that rereading this book came as a disappointment would be an enormous understatement. Perhaps it's because the NAs (and later, the EDAs) would reach much greater heights. Maybe I was a less sophisticated reader back in those days. But whatever the reason, I couldn't help but notice that many of the sequences really didn't seem to be much beyond the level of the Target novelisations. There are far too many action-oriented sequences that simply weren't interesting enough to sustain my attention. A lot of the characters varied between being stereotypical and just plain dull. The plot meandered into numerous vague areas; the storyline just feeling boring and uninspired. "Dreary characters wandering off on mind-numbing wild goose chases" is a summary of far too much of this story.

The book is structured around several moral dilemmas. When is war inevitable? What price is too high to pay for victory? To fight monsters, is it necessary to become one? Each of these questions (and the many others that the book raises) are interesting and intriguing concepts. Yet Mortimore never brings these questions out of the realm of one-dimensionality. Instead of complicated character motivations, we're treated to stock, clichéd ciphers. We have the warmongers, the peacemakers, and the pawns, but not one of them has apparently given more than thirty seconds of thought to their situation. Some very interesting questions are raised, but the answers that we're given are beyond shallow. Far too many of these apparently high-concept arguments just come across as overblown, superficial, and pretentious.

A few sequences and conversations that occur are fairly enjoyable. Unfortunately, they're rather spread out. It was a nice idea to see the how some familiar characters dealt with extraordinary circumstances, but the execution was sorely lacking in many areas. A few of these gems did manage to shine through; indeed, there's a powerful scene near the end where one of the characters takes his limited portrayal to the logical conclusion, creating an involving and emotional passage. But, unfortunately, this is the exception rather than the rule. For every one thing that I was interested in, there would be half a dozen things that had me rolling my eyes. Great massive chunks of this book could have been cut right out without losing anything. There would have been much to be gained from magnifying the things that this book did manage to succeed at, rather than having them buried under mounds of uninteresting and unbelievable moralizing. Giving the characters some realistic motivations wouldn't have hurt either.

If I hadn't reread this one, I would still have the much higher opinion of it that I formed back when I read it for the first time. Still it's interesting to read this in light of where the Doctor Who books were to go in the future. The topics and ideas discussed here about war and fighting monsters would be revisited again and again (a few times by Jim Mortimore himself). BLOOD HEAT shows these arguments in their immature infancy and at least we can see how much better they got.

A sort-of sequel to the TV serial 'The Silurians' (novelised under the name 'The Cave Monsters'), this novel is the first in a sequence of five (the remainder being 'The Dimension Riders', 'The Left-Handed Hummingbird', 'Conundrum' and 'No Future') which sees the Doctor and companions dealing with threats that tie into the Doctor's past, and that have a single for behind them all.

Having said that, this novel does stand on its own, and is set in a world where the Doctor was slain towards the end of 'The Silurians', and looks at what might have happened under those circumstances. It features the return of old allies the Brigadier, Liz Shaw and Jo Grant and puts an interesting twist on the lives of those people.

It is not, however, simply wallowing in the series' past. There are numerous new elements, the ongoing character development of the Doctor, Ace and Benny continues, and the story climaxes in a moral dilemma that drives further wedges between the companions.

Jim Mortimore uses this book to explore the "might have beens" of the Who universe, doing an excellent job while reinforcing what we already know and accept about the series.